Ethical Evasion

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Barclays’ involvement in tax avoidance and lack of transparent information over a huge investment have been inconsistent with its wider social responsibilities

Antony Jenkins, the chief executive of Barclays, told MPs and peers last week that he was working to “shred” the legacy of his predecessor. The verb was revealing. It is ineluctably linked in the public mind to Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland whose vainglorious and destructive business decisions earned him the sobriquet “the world’s worst banker”.

Unlike RBS, Barclays did not require a public bailout in the banking crisis of 2007-09. But scandals have lately engulfed it and Mr Jenkins’s language is a measure of their gravity. The bank urgently needs to demonstrate its